The sky in North Africa isn’t clear blue. It’s subdued and hazy. One might say it’s laiteuse; blue with a touch of milk, or yogurt. Unlike the beaches of the Pacific, you’re not stunned by the sky as much as you are aware that it’s relentlessly bearing down on you. The heat can be intense and unlike Paris, where folks scramble to sit in any…
Whenever I go to a foreign city, within a few hours of getting oriented, I invariably find myself mentally preparing my move there. I walk around the streets, admiring all the shops and interesting people speaking beautiful languages, and looking up at the apartments with curving iron railings and linens hanging out to dry I imagine myself being a part of it all and making…
Today, I’ve had gelato for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And as I write this, it’s only 3pm in the afternoon. It all started on this bright Sunday morning, when I made the onerous hike up to Prati, to Fatamorgana for their daring, wildly-flavored gelati. If you weren’t looking for the place, you’d probably keep going. But being the trooper that I am, in the blazing…
I’m sitting in a charming trailer, my makeshift room for a few days, parked alongside a serene canal surrounded by chickens and a few baby lambs roaming about here and there. So yes, I have to watch where I step. But it’s here that I’m unwinding after a rather curious weekend of wine tasting, which I’m slowly recovering from. Sure, there was a lot of…
I realized that a little while back I posted some pictures about my visit to Les Crayères, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the Champagne region, about an hour from Paris. But I never wrote about the meal or my experience. Since I’ve been planning another trip back—hopefully soon, it prompted me to share my lunch, at last. Perhaps some people coming to Paris want to take…
You’re probably thinking that I’m a little crazy saying that a meal that’s going to set you back a hundred bucks is a bon marché. I don’t know about you, but that’s not pocket change, even for a bon vivant like me. The first time I went to a three-star restaurant in Paris was about six years ago. After my female friend and I got…
A few things to know if you go to Berlin. Don’t cross the street unless the crosswalk light is green (you’ll likely get a scolding), hardly anywhere takes credit cards (cash works everywhere—and people are happy to give change), the coffee is great (so drink as much as you can, since you’ll need it), and the city changes quickly, from being gray and bleak at…
They say that you know you’re holding a glass of wine from Cahors if you can’t see your fingers on the other side of the glass through the wine. Which is why the malbec wine from Cahors is nicknamed “black wine”. Peer into a glass of it, and it’s easy to see (or should I say ‘not see’) why. I didn’t know much about the…
For the first five years in Paris, I wouldn’t go to Scoop. I’d walk by, scan the selections of hamburgers and “les wraps”, and keep going. Even though I was intrigued with the list of house-made ice creams, I’d always reason to myself, “I didn’t move to Paris to eat a hamburger.” I was reading recently about a site called My American Market that carries…
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